The Obama administration has announced changes to the surveillance operations conducted by the United States intelligence community, but critics are already using words like “weak” to describe the so-called reform.

Adjustments to how US
intel agencies collect and hold bulk data on Americans and
surveillance records concerning foreigners are outlined in
areport publishedon Tuesday this week by the Office
of the Director of National Intelligence.

The report—released near the one-year anniversary of an address
in which US President Barack Obama promised surveillance reform
in the wake of an international eavesdropping scandal—is
described by the ODNI as being the result of a “comprehensive
effort to examine and enhance the privacy and civil liberty
protections we embed in our signals intelligence (SIGINT)
collection activities.”

Private information pertaining to Americans that is
“incidentally” swept up by electronic surveillance programs
intended to target foreigners must now be purged if they contain
no useful intelligence, according to changes explained in the
report, and records regarding foreigners that appear useless must
be discarded after five years. Additionally, the report says that
details about National Security Letters served to companies
typically with a gag order can now be publically disclosed after
three years, and an oversight board is being established to
monitor how American agencies eavesdrop on foreign leaders.

The report “highlights substantial progress and reflects an
ongoing commitment to greater transparency,” the White House
said.

“As we
continue to face threats from terrorism, proliferation and
cyber-attacks, we must use our intelligence capabilities in a way
that optimally protects our national security and supports our
foreign policy while keeping the public trust and respecting
privacy and civil liberties,”Lisa Monaco, a homeland security
advisor to President Obama, said in a separate statement.

Nearly two years after surveillance revelations came to light
following former government contractor Edward Snowden’s
disclosure of top-secret documents to the media, critics say the
changes are too few and too late.

“Obama's latest NSA 'Reform' is predictably weak,”
Gizmodo declared in a Tuesday morning headline.
“Proposed changes to US data collection fall short of NSA
reformers' goals,” boasted an article published by the Guardian—the same
paper that published the first of Snowden's surveillance scoops
in June 2013, which helped prompt calls for changes.

Even the report, the Guardian article's authors pointed out,
acknowledges the inability of American lawmakers to curb one of
the more controversial surveillance programs exposed by Snowden.
Nearly two years later, the Obama administration has failed to
bring significant changes to Section 215 of the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance, leaving largely untouched a provision
that permits the National Security Agency to compel American
telecoms to divulge customer metadata in bulk.

“The administration was
disappointed that the 113th Congress ended without enacting this
legislation,” the ODNI report reads. “The Intelligence
Community encourages Congress to quickly take up and pass
legislation that would allow the government to end bulk
collection of telephony metadata records under Section 215, while
ensuring that the government has access to the information it
needs to meet its national security requirements.”

One of the groups that has called for curbing the program—the
White House's own Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board —
said last month that President Obama could end the dragnet phone
surveillance “at any time,” but has failed to do so,
instead asking Congress to come up with a compromise.